I cant hardly tell you how to play as playstyles differ, but if you want kills your going to need more attack speed, I'd suggest dropping Youmous for Phantom dancer. And I dont reccomend Brutalizer, instead get Sword of the Occult, and just keep your distance.

That way instead of having assists, your damage will eventually get high enough to get kills.
I reccomend getting your Armor penetration from your red runes and your masteries.

-Zerg

Edit: Late game if you need the extra umph you can pick up ghost blade though, sell your dorans shield, but realistically a game shouldn't last that long, and everything is situational.

Edit Edit: Another afterthought, if your getting punished hard for being so squishy, make sure to pick up a bloodthirster, it helps ashes' survivability a lot. Sub it out instead of Sword of Occult if the games going rough.

I play like the original poster and tend to end up with more assists than kills... but I'm not sure why it matters. With a similar build (probably with a regen pendant first and maybe going for tear of the goddess to help with mana), it's usually really effective especially towards the endgame. I'm fine with assists instead of kills and my teams tend to win as a result. Am I missing some reason why kills over assists matter (other than extra gold, etc., but that's easy to get by slaughtering minions)?

I also don't really go for the attack speed build on Ashe. I'm trying to get my damage up (and ideally cooldown down) so that I can spam volley and hit hard that way - being able to attack faster with my primary attack is less helpful than damage or crit percent. I'm not saying zergling's wrong but I'm honestly interested in hearing from people who go for the attack speed build for Ashe - why do you go that route? Do you use volley much or just rely on your normal attack?

I cant hardly tell you how to play as playstyles differ, but if you want kills your going to need more attack speed, I'd suggest dropping Youmous for Phantom dancer. And I dont reccomend Brutalizer, instead get Sword of the Occult, and just keep your distance.

That way instead of having assists, your damage will eventually get high enough to get kills.
I reccomend getting your Armor penetration from your red runes and your masteries.

-Zerg

Edit: Late game if you need the extra umph you can pick up ghost blade though, sell your dorans shield, but realistically a game shouldn't last that long, and everything is situational.

Edit Edit: Another afterthought, if your getting punished hard for being so squishy, make sure to pick up a bloodthirster, it helps ashes' survivability a lot. Sub it out instead of Sword of Occult if the games going rough.

This doesn't make sense at all. I'm very rarely just standing there shooting them. I'm either Kiting them or chasing them. Having to move between shots greatly diminishes the effectiveness of Attack Speed. Also, Brutalizer is damage/CDR/Armor Pen in a relatively cheap package.

As for Sword of Occult, I really don't like stack items like that much. They're too inconsistent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ricklessabandon

infinity edge + youmuu's + green elixir is a standard carry build (along with armor penetration marks + quints).
your damage is high, but it's sustained damage. you're essentially a powerful dot spell.
getting more kills than assist require "last hitting" a champion while they're being focused, and as you've surely learned from laning, it's harder to last with with a dot spell than it is with a nuke.

that's why champions like garen, gangplank, annie, anivia, akali, etc can have really good kda ratios regardless of how much they contribute to a fight and champions like ashe, trist, trynd, etc rely more on "luck" or teammates willing to share the wealth.

in the end, it doesn't affect things too much--ashe can easily get a lot of assists which can get her a lot more gold than say leblanc. if you ace the other team, ashe will likely have 5 kills/assists and leblanc will likely have only 2, though leblanc has a better chance that they're kills instead of assists.

if you're doing your job, you'll get the nexus regardless of how "pro" your stats look at the end of the game. a good sign of an inexperienced player is their association of skill with kdr.

I suppose this means that I'm right around where I should be then. Do you recommend going for other items after Youmou and Infinity, or should I just stock up on Agility/Fortitude Elixers after them?

Infi Edge, Youmus, Phage, Bloodthrister, --> Frozen Mallet.
I see a lot of Ashe simply go Infi Edge/Bloodthrister/Bloodthrister/Phantom (pure dmg in other words) but they get insta die in every teamfight, position yourself as much as you want.

So after 2-3 Dmg Items, grab a Phage/Frozen Mallet, then continue to get dmg.

Start with Doran's Blade, skip Brutalizer, get boots, rush Infinity Edge, follow it up with a Banshee's Veil. Don't stop farming until Infinity Edge is complete or you have no choice.

If you're having a bad early game (you died a lot or are getting zoned), buy 1-2 additional Doran's Blade for survivability. If you're having a good early game (not getting pushed out of your lane, high creep score), save up until you can afford boots and a BF Sword.

Also like they said above, skip Ghostblade. If you absolutely need the speed and dodge (rarely) after your Infinity Edge, go with Phantom Dancer, otherwise Last Whisper.

Ashe isn't necessarily a champ that gets a giant amount of killing blows as she does not have good burst damage. She can do great sustained damage during ganks as well as team fights, and she is an assist magnet with her ult. Her volley usually is the bulk of your damage in team fights and sometimes it can snag a kill, but really I think Ashe is a carry that is more of a support than most.

Reason being, she can kite chasers who run and keep them near your team but she is not always the one to get the kill in that case because she does not just pounce up and smash a nuke on them; she only does the duty of keeping them slowed with sustained damage through frost arrows. It is very possibly that one of your teammates moves up and snags the kill with a nuke. Also sometimes your ult can get the killing blow, but far more often used to initiate a gank or team fight to stun a dps/slow the team and do a nice chunk of damage. Obviously Ashe is a great solo mid for this reason...her hawkshot and ult can be used to support the side lanes without hardly even leaving your lane (depending where you need a hawkshot for vision on a brush/neutral monster, or if you have to move back to not give away your travelling ult to the enemy mid or need a moment of focus to line up the shot on a moving target).

IMO, she's a carry that can also be played as a hybrid carry/support. In fact often that is the role she ends up as even as the only hard carry on the team, just due to her skillset as mentioned she does not have burst and burst is what nets killing blows. Of course she can destroy late game or if she is fed and has 250+AD, but any champion can destroy with that kind of gear. What she lacks though in burst compared to an Ezreal or Tristana or Twitch, she makes up for with team support in ganking superiority (not even having to leave the lane), initiation, kiting and and a clairvoyance shot that prevent ganks or reveal gank opportunities. She's just an extremely useful teammate to have if well played. Which more than justifies her lack of K on her KDA compared to other ranged carries.

BTW...about Youmuu's. Personally I feel it is great on Ashe but not for the reasons most list. Firstly, again she depends on volley for relevant damage in team fights since she does not have burst. Sure she opens with crystal arrow maybe and uses frost arrows and/or crystal arrow for cleanup duty after the fight, but during the fight after she right clicks the carry she is launching volleys over the team to do 200-500 damage a pop to everyone for a massive amount of total damage spread over one single shot. That is burst in a sense, but not burst on a single champ, which is why she doesn't often get kills with it. To maximize volley, you need damage of course but you also need ArPen and CDR. Youmuu's/Brutalizer gives these items in addition to damage, and are pretty much the only items in the game that give these stats that work well with Ashe. Black Cleaver is only good on fast attacking champs. Ashe is a kiter/sniper who does not stand and just shoot people 12 times in a row. Last Whisper is always great for armor stackers but ArPen/Armor reduction (like Starks) is much better for reducing natural armor towards 0 or even in the negatives. This not only makes her right click hit like a beast but more importantly, her VOLLEY. Volley is a PHYSICAL attack unlike crystal arrows.

YES, I know that the active on Youmuu's cannot be extended by ranged attacks. For Ashe, it really does not matter...if she does get a moment to fire a few shots in a row in a team fight, it would certainly not be for more than 4 seconds before someone notices and moves toward her to rip her face off. If you use it to destroy a tower, the active would not get extended anyway but the boost is great for pounding them down quick. And of course to help her chase/escape, since she has no flash/dash/speed boost move like most carries. So the active is brilliantly versatile and absolutely golden on Ashe, despite the fact that you cannot extend the duration of the active. This does not mean however, that you should rush Youmuu's....IE is still first and foremost the absolute most core item on Ashe aside from Boots/Brutalizer (crit damage is golden for her passive and also it is just the best pure AD item) Just Boots/Brutalizer/IE will make you a beast

if you get a lot of assists it is fine but you SHOULD be getting kills by your team letting you get them (not gona happen too often in normal matches) because you are a carry and should do the most damage, but as long as you are helping out and doing damage in teamfights assists are fine

Personally for summoner spells I roll with Flash/Ghost. Ashe doesnt have any good defensive abilities really and yes ignite might be tempting for more burst but unless you are absolutely confident in your team protecting you I'd rather play conservative with my summoner spell selection. I usually roll a 11/0/19 build, taking both CDR masteries, ArPen mastery (could do 12/0/18 if you really like bit of % magic pen for crystal arrow) and for utility it is probably pretty obvious what you take. That way if I end up with Youmuu's+Brutalizer (which normally I have time to build after IE before the game ends) I'm at 40CDR and 60ArPen and mid/late game I'm still hitting for nearly full damage on anyone, and doing crushing volleys every 3 sec on a team fight. 3 volleys and the team is done usually